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Your Parents & Technology!

Why is it as we get older we get so bad with technology? Is this going to happen to me too? I bet it will, my eye site is already crap, and I gave up on figuring out video games after Wii Tennis!

I love my father, he is one of the smartest people I know. He is a geologist, skilled photographer, speaks five languages, and a huge classic movie fan. Growing up, my father was a technology god to me. All other fathers would come to him to fix their electronics or learn how to use them. We had all the cool toys in the house with my favorite being the super 8 movie projector that made me a popular boy during the pre-VCR days. Like I said the man is smart, but boy put anything with an LCD screen in front of him and all of a sudden my brother & I are help desk. Sometimes when he calls I even fake a help desk accent for him. I know….. That’s not very PC. 🙂

Throughout the years I have painfully lived through my father buying iPods, laptops, iPads, and iPhones. Although he has mastered each one of them, this wasn’t without giving my brother and I few extra grey hairs. It was always the same, as soon as he bought new electronic, feelings would get hurt, doors would get slammed and gadgets would get thrown across the room. Now that I am getting older, I feel bad about our behavior. I already see that my daughters are figuring out electronics faster than me. Any day karma will bite my ass and my daughters will be the ones faking help desk accents with me.

Few years ago I was having the “technology and parents” conversation with a friend and he said nobody is as bad as his dad. Apparently his father wanted an email account and my friend set him up on a Hotmail.com. My friend patiently spent hours teaching his older father use his new email account and walked out his father’s house as a proud son. His pride ended abruptly when his father called him very early the next morning yelling. Following is the script of the conversation between father and son:

Father: You son of a bitch, what kind of F@#king website did you set me up on?
Son: Dad, calm down what’s wrong?
Father: Why would you think I want to see pictures of nude men?
Son: Dad hold on…….What did you type in the browser?
Dad: I typed in Hotmale like you told me!!!!!
Son: Dad………It’s Hotmail, not Hotmale!!!!!

Last thought…. Few months after Molly was diagnosed I bought a record player and some used classical music records. When I was a kid I loved my father’s record player. He didn’t like me playing with it because I was notorious for breaking record players. Because of my father’s record player, I learned to appreciate classical music and comfort the music brought. I still remember the popping sounds the record would make while listening to Mozart’s Requiem. The warm sound of records brought of sense of calm to me as a child, and I really needed that comfort. Interesting part is that my daughters love the new record player and they are also learning to appreciate classical music. This is all because their grandfather had a record player. Moral of this story is, be nice to your parents when they ask you to help them with their technology problems!